Looking For It
by Cotix14
Summary: After everything that happened that night, none of the seven had wanted to go visit Josh at the clinic. Sam is the first one to decide she should. He was her best friend. She knew he needed them, and she missed him. It only took her seven months to figure that out, and that he had not meant to hurt them, not really. AU in which Josh is not a wendigo. Slight SamxJosh.
**Hi! So like a year ago I said I wouldn't post anymore, but I liked Until Dawn so I decided to do a quick One Shot. It took me about an hour or two to write, so don't expect anything wonderful. This is slightly AU, in which Josh was found before he turned into a Wendigo and was taken into a clinic. It is what happens when Sam decides to visit him, a long time after the events of the game. It's slightly JoshxSam, but I suppose it can be interpreted in a platonic way, your choice.**

 **Hope you like it.**

 **Looking For It**

She found him coloring.

Sam had been going back and forth about visiting Josh for the past month, at least. It had been seven months and fourteen days since she blew up the lodge; since the Wendigo and Hannah… Miraculously, all eight of them survived. For an excruciating three days they had thought Josh was dead, but the police found him, starving, in the mines near the place where Beth had been buried. They had immediately taken him to a psychiatric ward, at the request of his seven best friends. None of them had visited. Which is why Sam thought they should. He was their friend, after all. If what happened on the mountains had affected them, she could only begin to imagine how much it had broken Josh.

Sam tried to convince Chris first, figuring he'd be the easiest. He wasn't. He still seemed a bit sore about the choices Josh had forced him to make, and about Ashley's black eye. Ashley was even more reluctant than Chris. Emily and Matt had declined, although Sam had a feeling Matt only declined because Emily had. Mike did seem more willing to go, but he was stuck to Jessica's side, who was fucked up in her own way after what had happened. Sam couldn't say she blamed her; after Josh, Jess got the most traumatic experience of the eight.

So, Sam now had to go visit Josh alone. She had been putting it off. She was nervous. Not really that Josh would hurt her; she didn't think he would. She was more scared of what she would see: Josh, maybe in a straitjacket, blabbering and unrecognizable… Or worse, the days when she tried to convince herself not to go, she would picture him in that god-awful jumper and that creepy-ass mask. It's not that his whole Psycho bullshit had traumatized her or anything of the sort, but it reminded him of how fucked up he had been, what he was capable of for revenge.

Instead, she found him with his back towards her, hunched over a desk, scribbling furiously, with a box of colored crayons beside him. She stopped and stared at him for a moment. He didn't look too bad, although she couldn't see his face. He had regained the weight he lost while he had been trapped in the mines, and he wasn't wearing an ugly med robe or the fucking jumper, instead he had a pair of shorts and a gray t-shirt. It was weird to see him looking so normal in a place like this; everything white, a door that didn't open from the inside, bars on the windows…

She cleared he throat and tried her best at a genuine smile, which was something she hadn't had in about seven months and fourteen days. Josh jumped lightly, and looked momentarily startled, before breaking into a grin at the sight of her.

"Sam!" he exclaimed, turning his chair and nearly tripping trying to reach her. It was no more than two steps between them, but he seemed in a hurry to close that space. He stopped with his arms outstretched in front of her, and then seemed to think better of it, reaching a hand to scratch the back of his head.

"Hi, Josh," she said nervously, staring up at him. He looked so sane, so normal… It was hard to believe what he had tried to do only a few months before. She could have almost imagined nothing had happened, if it wasn't because of the scars on his face.

"Oh, man…" he said, placing both hands on the back of his neck, about as relaxed as she felt. "You have no idea how happy I am to see you, Sammy." He dropped his hands back to his sides. "You cut your hair."

She bit her lip; nobody had called her 'Sammy' in seven months. She had missed it. "I am glad to see you, too," she said honestly, fiddling with a strand of her now shoulder-length waves. A long moment of awkward silence followed. "What are you drawing?" she asked finally.

He turned his head towards the desk, his right hand flying right back to the back of his head. His hair had grown longer, Sam noticed. "Oh, wow. That's so embarrassing," he mumbles, as she brushes past him to take a look at his drawings. There are many. And they're quite good. The first she notices is Chris and Ashley sitting on opposite sides of a wooden table, same as they looked when Mike and she had found them. The next one was creepier, it looked like Beth, Sam thought, except she was quite clearly dead. Next to it, there was someone in a bathtub. Blood rushed to Sam's cheeks when she recognized herself. It was detailed; the bun her hair was in, her phone on the edge of the tub, even the slight curve of her breasts before the water covered them.

"You don't have to see those," Josh said, covering the one she was detailing with his hand.

"Why are you drawing that, Josh?" Sam asked him. She was not mad about her drawing, but it did worry her why he would feel he needed to go back to that day.

"It helps me," he said, rather unhelpfully. "It-It helps me remember what's real," he explained, upon seeing her confused expression. "What I really saw that night."

Sam stared at him again, and he stared right back. His gray eyes were filled with doubt. She is very aware that he's ashamed, and she desperately doesn't want him to feel like this. It wasn't his fault. "Show them to me," she found herself saying.

He wasn't expecting her to say that, she could tell. "Okay." He gently took her hand and led her to the edge of his bed. She sat down, and watched him gather the papers on the desk. Finally he sat down beside her, but careful to keep a few inches of space between them.

"Yeah, so… This one is real," he explained, pointing at the one of Chris and Ashley, "Because I can see it clearly. In my head, I mean. And if I focus, I can remember all these details. Like where you and Mike were and what each of you had been wearing and things like that." She took the drawing from his shaky hand and stared at the detail. It was true, everything looked the same, even the cuts on both Ashley's and Chris' faces.

"This one is not real," he said firmly, as if it had taken him a while to believe it himself, and he showed her the drawing that looked just like Beth, "And I know it's not because… when I think about it… When I try to remember it… The edges are blurry."

"What do you mean?" she said, taking the second drawing from his hand. It was Beth, there was no doubt about it. She had the same hair, the same hat she'd been wearing the day she disappeared. _Died_ , a voice whispered in the back of her mind. She chose to ignore said voice.

Josh looked at Sam again, "I don't know how to explain," he said. "It's like a picture, in my head. I can't see anything but that, I can't see her body or what as around her. All I can see it's her face. The rest is just not there, or like, blurred."

Sam looks at the drawing some more. It was dreadful. Not the drawing in itself, but what it showed. "Did you really see this?" Sam asked carefully. "I mean, even if it was just in your head, Beth…" she didn't know how to keep going without upsetting him. The nurses had warned her that she shouldn't upset him.

"I did," he said, "before you and Mike found me. And you told me the truth about my sisters."

And before she has a chance to think it through, or stop herself, she throws her arms around his neck. After a moment, his hands carefully settled on her lower back, and she could feel his warm breath on her shoulder. "I am so sorry," she mumbled against his neck. Suddenly she knew why it had taken her seven months and fourteen days to visit him. She had never been afraid of him, not even for a second. But she had felt betrayed. She thought, before, that they had had this sort of stupid connection, and after all that happened, she thought maybe it had just been her. Now she was painfully aware of how unjust that was of her. He was in pain, he needed help, he wasn't well. And she had had the guts of making it about herself, instead of thinking about him, how much all that happened had ruined him. It wasn't that he didn't trust her. It was that he was so messed up, he didn't even know how to fix himself.

"You didn't do anything," he said, and his lips barely tickled the skin on her bare shoulder.

"But I should have," she mumbled, "I should have visited."

"You did," he said, and she could almost feel his stupid smirk. "You're here now."

"You know what I mean, you idiot," she said, smiling slightly. "I mean before. I should have come right after you were found."

He gently stroked her back with one hand, and for a moment she did nothing but enjoy the feel of it. "You needed time," he said. "I needed it, too. I- I wasn't okay. I'm still not okay." She feels his breath shake slightly and she holds him tighter. "I need help, Sammy. If it wasn't for all the meds I'm taking, you might have found me in a straitjacket." He means it as a joke, she knows, but she thought of him in a straitjacket so often that she couldn't possibly find it funny.

"I'm sorry," she repeated. She wasn't even sure what she was apologizing for anymore. For not coming? For Beth and Hannah? For making it about herself, when it was clear that he had never meant to really hurt her? Maybe just for everything.

He didn't say anything. They held each other for what could have been minutes or hours. It didn't matter to Sam. She had missed him. More than she thought. Finally, they broke apart and both smiled, and for the first time in ages it didn't feel forced.

"Aha!" he said with a wide grin, holding another drawing in his hand. "This one is real, or at least I want it to be."

She didn't have to look to know he was holding the one of her in the bathtub. She pushed his shoulder, chuckling. "Dick," she said.

"Okay, staring at you while you were in the tub was a bit pervy," he said, smirking, "but you happen to be quite hot and I couldn't pass the opportunity."

She hit him again, this time a bit harder. "Dick," she repeated, but she was smiling, and her cheeks felt quite warm.

"And still you love me," he said, winking at her.

She snorted, "You wish."

"Snorting is not ladylike, Samantha."

They talked quietly afterwards. Sam was almost grateful nobody else came with her. She was happy to spend some alone time with Josh. He had said he wasn't well yet, and she believed him, because why would he say it otherwise. Except he was so normal. So funny, and sweet, just like he had been before. If he could be like this, it gave her hope. She was disappointed when the nurse said visiting hours were over.

"I will tell the others to come see you, too," she told him, lightly squeezing one of his hands before standing up.

"But you will come again, too, right?" he said, springing to his feet, almost too desperately for it to be cute. Almost.

She stood on her tiptoes and pressed her lips softly to his cheek, lingering perhaps a second or two longer than necessary. "I'll come every day, if you want me to."

"I do," he said, just a bit too quickly, his face burning. "I do want you to."

"Okay," she said, smiling. "See you soon, Josh."

Maybe the connection was still there. She just had to look for it.

 **If you liked it, let me know in a review :) And if you want to discuss the game, feel welcome to PM me.**


End file.
